BY BORDI JAEN
THE MORE attentive readers of last time’s column entitled “On the passion of man” would have noticed a discrepancy in the first quote.
The quote, as I explained in the erratum I posted on Facebook, was supposed to be “Reason is the slave of passion” and not the other way around!
Instead of moping around and being angry at myself for this error, I decided it would be a great opportunity to set an example of the words I speak. Words, after all, are but hollow winds without committing them to practice.
Making errors is a human feature. We do it on a daily basis. What makes the man is not the error but how he deals with it. All of us are fools at some point but how we address our faults will define us in the eyes of men. What, then, is the proper recourse to address our faults and errors?
Is being angry a recourse? What is the point of being angry at ourselves? Will it remedy the fault?
The fault has already been committed and being angry is like trying to scrap off at a freshly painted wall with our fingernails. Ineffective and messy.
Embarrassment is certainly a side effect of committing an error; it’s human nature. However, it is a feeling overcome-able and impermanent. We only feel this because we worry about what others think of us. But then, who has the right to really put us down? Everyone makes mistakes one way or another in his lifetime. Like sin, he who has no error cast the first stone.
Why is it not good to carry the burden of our faults on our backs? You tell me, “But I must punish myself for committing an error.” What for? Punishing ourselves has no positive outcomes for ourselves, nor does it remedy our faults. It only harms.
There is only one proper recourse – transformation. John D. Rockefeller once said, “I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.” The best remedy is to humbly correct ourselves, or accept correction if it comes from others. After that, transform the error into something that could be of use to us.
If you only look around, many things were results of mistakes. Penicillin was the result of a doctor throwing away a culture of bacteria by accident. Cornflakes were created when a pot of boiled grain was accidentally left on the stove for several days. This article was the result of a careless writer interchanging words in a sentence which he happens to make every other day. Our errors can be turned into advantages when dealt with properly as it was throughout history.
What if someone else makes an error or mistake towards us or vice versa?
Alexander Pope makes the point by saying, “To err is human; to forgive, divine”. Forgive! It is sometimes very hard to do, especially if it hurts on a personal note. We’ve all been in those shoes, however. If we can forgive ourselves for the errors we make, I tell you, it will be easy to forgive others.
Someone once did something to a friend of mine and that friend forgave that person easily. I was quite bewildered at that time by that coolness and ease my friend displayed. I asked him, “How could you so easily forgive him? Are you not hurt?”
To this my friend replied, “He didn’t mean it.”
What simplicity! It is also sometimes for the best to laugh things off. Life, after all, is full of opportunities to laugh at!
For clarification, to laugh at the situation and not the people. One time, I asked a waitress for a glass of water to take my medicine with, and she came back with a spoon and fork. I clarified my request to the waitress and she came back with my glass of water.
The poor woman must have been tired, I thought. My friends and I found it quite amusing. I certainly had the fault of not being clear at first. See, how easy dealing with such things are if only we allow it to be so?
In conclusion, life is going to be full of us making errors and faults but it is also full of opportunities to correct them and to transform them into better things. We’re only here on Earth for a short time. While we enjoy our time of conscious existence, let’s not waste it by moping about and carrying the errors on our backs like big sacks of rice. To be prisoners of our own minds is to be in the worst kind of prison./PN
